Friday, 27 January 2017

Ballads of War 1 x 06

I think the Rogue Trader atmosphere is embedded in my mind, so a story set in this universe needed a strong adventure-like taste, not a mere pew-pew.

That's why I didn't see an issue in having Eldar and Tau interacting with lowlife humans within my narrative. This was one of the major feedback concerns I got from some people; they simply didn't conceive that members of these three species would even talk to each other without a proper mutual shooting. I tried to argue that the Xenos were on a ship that was taken down and they were trying to get out of the planet using local human outlaws, as that was the only option they faced, being isolated survivors on the surface of an Imperial planet. They were contacting the kind of people who wouldn't care that much who the employer was as long as the pay was good. For me that made sense in my RT way of understanding WH40K, but apparently it wasn't a popular point of view back in the day within the 'orthodoxy'. Well, of course some years later GW came with the allied rules again (kind as they already existed in 2nd Ed, ahem) and then the problem suddenly seemed to fade away for these people. The gurus had spoken.

Whatever.

Let's focus on the page. There is a lot of information here. What could make two Eldar Harlequins and a Tau settle such a strange company? Why were all of them on board of a Tau ship? What's that misterious piece of tech they want to get so bad? Wait... that gold ingot-stuff... has Necron iconography on it? (don't worry, it's unlikely that a common Imperial citizen gets to recognise that)

Hmmm, those are a lot of questions. Maybe (only maybe) you can get some answers in future pages. You will have to keep on reading to discover it...